JJ MacNab is the nation’s leading expert on sovereign citizens, tax protesters, and the various right-wing extremist groups that make up the modern Sovereign movement. She first encountered this subculture in 1997, when an elderly client who had been scammed out of his life savings came to her financial planning firm for advice, and since that time, she has successfully monitored hundreds of tax defier and sovereign citizen organizations.
MacNab testified on the subject before the US Senate in 2001 and 2004 and presented a written follow-up report to the Senate Finance Committee in 2006. Her book on the movement is scheduled for publication in 2015 by Palgrave MacMillan.

According to law enforcement officials, when alleged shooter Paul Anthony Ciancia walked into the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday morning dressed in fatigues, his duffel bag contained a rifle, ammunition, and a one-page letter addressed to the Transportation Security Administration.

Sprinkled among the news reports that followed lay several clues about a possible motive for the shooting, and so far everything points to an act of domestic terrorism carried out by an ideologically driven member of the modern Patriot movement.

“Pissed off Patriot”: According to police, Ciancia referred to himself as a Patriot in his note. It’s important to keep in mind that members of this loose-knit movement have co-opted a common word associated with courageous and loyal values, and twisted the definition in an effort to paint themselves as heroic figures.

The Manifesto: When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, he carefully filled an envelope with pamphlets, articles, papers, and Founding Father quotes to explain his rationale for mass murder. When Joseph Stack flew his airplane into the Austin, Texas IRS building in 2010, he left a manifesto on his website. Patriots who commit violent acts know that their individual efforts are too small to effect real change, but hope to inspire others to engage the government violently as well.

Fatigues: Many Patriots assume military-style clothing, weapons, speech, and demeanor in an effort to wrap their activities in a layer of respectability and honor. After all, when American soldiers kill the nation’s enemies during war, they return home as heroes. Patriots believe that they too are at war, but their enemy is not a foreign nation or terrorist organization – it’s the U.S. government. They dress and act like soldiers so that they can feel like and be judged as brave warriors rather than as murderers.

The Firearm: The M&P15 (“Military and Police”) semi-automatic tactical rifle falls into the AR-15 class of weapons, which is preferred by Patriots for a number of reasons. Such guns are inexpensive, easy to shoot, accurate, customizable, and for a 10-year period starting in 1994, this type of rifle was banned by federal law, which gives the weapon a certain prestige among Patriot groups. Despite the M&P name, Smith & Wesson has actively marketed the rifle to civilian shooters.

TSA as a Target: The Transportation Security Administration is a relatively new agency, and is part of the Department of Homeland Security. According to the indictment, Ciancia wrote that he had “made a conscious decision to kill” multiple TSA employees, and indeed, he fired his weapon mostly at TSA agents, killing one, injuring others and injuring one airline passenger. While Patriots traditionally have not included the TSA on their list of enemies, considerable animosity and threats have been aimed at the IRS, the DHS, Federal judges, the FBI, the Federal Reserve, the ATF, FEMA, and the EPA in the past. According to one news report, Ciancia also lashed out at former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in his letter, calling her a “bull-dyke.”

Fiat currency/NWO: In his manifesto, Ciancia referred to “fiat currency” and the “NWO,” likely a reference to the New World Order conspiracy theory. Under this Patriot myth, when the U.S. government stopped backing the dollar with gold reserves, the power to create and control money was passed to a cartel of secretive international bankers, who continue to use their power today to keep all Americans in economic slavery. Jared Loughner had a similar fascination with fiat currency conspiracy theories.

Domestic Terrorism: And finally, according to the FBI, Ciancia was fairly explicit about his goals. He wrote that he wanted to “kill TSA and pigs” in order to “instill fear in your terrorist minds.” Once again, in the Patriot movement, language is key; a man who walks into a crowded airport and shoots several unarmed people isn’t a killer, he is a patriotic soldier in the epic battle against the terrorist organization called the U.S. government.

On November 2, 2013, Ciancia was charged with killing a federal agent and intentionally performing an act of violence at an airport, and faces a possible death sentence if he survives his injuries from the shootout with officers. Contrary to his efforts to make himself look like a patriotic hero, he’ll be judged by his acts rather than his words.

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